Troubleshooting

The kernel 2.6 hangs when accessing the RTC (real time clock). (Got timeout on my machine; other people have reported boot failure).

Workaround: use the kernel command line option hpet=disable. (Background: The HPET timer grabs the RTC interrupt. The kernel HPET driver has an option to emulate the RTC, but it is disabled in 2.6.12-10-686.

Alternatively, you can enable the RTC emulation by ?recompiling your kernel. Works well for me (although the workaround above is perfectly OK). Make the following changes in menuconfig against stock Debian 2.6.12-1-686: